Tuesday, September 11, 2012

By all appearances the Democratic Party had a successful
convention last week.

Having no record to run on and no policies to propose it fell
back on its basic strategy: rally the oppressed against their straight white
male oppressors.

It’s a lesson out of Class Struggle 101. It is also an exercise
in modern demagoguery.

Within today’s Democratic Party, African-Americans are
guaranteed a privileged position. So privileged, in fact, that other groups are
supposed to see themselves as having suffered the same oppression that American
blacks did.

Thus, the convention worked long and hard to identify and
isolate oppressed minority groups, the better to make them into classes of
voters. Among them, Hispanics, Muslims, Native Americans, illegal immigrants, union
members, gays and, of course, women.

It isn’t new. This time, the anxiety is so thick that the
Democrats made their most blatant appeal to single women as a political class by
telling them that the white male establishment was going to take away their sexuality,
or some such thing.

As a political tactic it has worked before. The Democratic
Party has mastered the art of manipulating single women into expressing their
class solidarity in the voting booth.

One should not underestimate the power of class
identification through victimhood. After all, African-Americans have suffered
the most economically under the Obama administration, and yet, they are going
to vote for Barack Obama in near unanimity.

Class interest has swamped self-interest.

To build a permanent majority liberals are always on the
lookout for new oppressed groups. Two weeks ago Salon’s Paul Campos has written
an essay that lays the groundwork for creating a new class of Democratic
voters: the obese.

He does not say it explicitly, but how else to understand
his absurd screed about how the obese are the new homosexuals, and thus that
fatophobia is equivalent to homophobia.

Campos argues
that obesity, like homosexuality has been singled out and labeled by the
medical establishment as a disease, something that needs to be treated and
eliminated.

This has, by his lights, given everyone the freedom to
discriminate against people on the basis of weight.

Campos writes:

The
extent to which either one’s sexual orientation or one’s weight are chosen
states is minimal. With rare exceptions, people cannot intentionally alter
either their sexual orientation or their weight in a long-term way. Given all
this, to label same-sex orientation or higher than average body weight as
diseases stigmatizes those who are so labeled to no purpose, other than to
express disapproval of deviance from social norms to which the stigmatized
cannot adhere.

Telling
fat people they ought to be thin is about as helpful as telling gay people they
should be straight. It took many decades for the medical establishment to
recognize that its “cures” for “homosexuality” did far more damage than the
imaginary disease to which they were addressed, and that the biggest favor it
could do for gay people was to stop harassing them. Fat people are still
waiting for the same favor.

Of course, this is nonsense. But note now the obese are being
invited to join the class of those who are stigmatized and harassed for failing
to adhere to social norms that, we are led to believe, are unjust.

The analogy is obviously specious.

True enough, most homosexuals are born gay, and it was a
very bad idea to try to “cure” them.

And some obesity is caused by metabolic and genetic
disorders.

Let’s assume that we know the difference between obese and
overweight. And let’s assume that we do not want to see everyone become skeletally
thin.

Still, why does it happen that America has so many more
obese people than anywhere else in the world? Is it something in the water or in the gene pool?

Whereas homosexual orientation should neither be treated nor
cured, obesity can be treated and can be cured. With a great deal of effort,
with more effort than most people can muster on their own, but it can be done. Witness
the television show called “The Biggest Loser.”

While
it may be the case that obesity should not be seen as a disease, it is and
should be seen as a disease-causing factor. A long-term
study of men ages 40 to 65 with a BMI between 25 and 29 found they
have 75% increase in risk of coronary heart disease, and overweight women a 50%
increase. Furthermore, hypertension (which can lead to congestive heart
failure), is three times more common in obese individuals. In 2006, another study
found that in 2002-2003, nearly 60% of newly diagnosed diabetics were obese,
and that in 1997, 18.3 of every 1000 obese people were diagnosed with type 2
diabetes, as compared to only 2 of every 1000 individuals of normal weight.

Despite
these diabetes statistics, the article claims that attempts to “lessen the
prevalence of diabetes by eliminating ‘obesity’ makes no more sense than trying
to lessen the prevalence of HIV infection by eliminating ‘homosexuality’.” The
fallacy in this argument is that while there is nothing intrinsic in the
biology of gay people that predisposes them to HIV infection, insulin
resistance is a well documented result of obesity that can lead to diabetes.

If America is leading the world I obesity one must suspect
that a great deal of it is caused by a culture that promotes bad habits, like eating too much of the
wrong foods and exercising too little.

These are bad habits, even moral failings, and they can
certainly be changed. Replacing bad habits with good habits is more difficult
for some people than for others, but living in a culture where we are
constantly told that we should love people as they are and never judge them
does not help.

People need an incentive to change their bad habits. Being
accepted as they are creates a disincentive.

We live in an extremely tolerant, even permissive society.
We are told on a regular basis to satisfy our sexual appetites, lest we become
seriously ill.

Why should anyone be surprised that a significant number of
Americans has decided that they will become ill if they fail to satisfy their
alimentary appetites, too?

Paul Campos notwithstanding we do not live in a culture that is especially harsh in its judgment about obesity. We do not live in a culture where people indulge their gluttony and sloth as a statement of rebelling against the white male establishment.

On the contrary, we live in a culture that
promotes and sustains obesity.

2 comments:

Anonymous
said...

I would echo the comments about these bad habits, including alchohol.Because one can't easily see the effects of alcohol (it doesn't necessarily add weight to a man's frame after a year of this bad habit), it is easy to dismiss this as just as bad a habit.But the gluttony is just the same if you ask me, and the unwillingness to change these unhealthy habits is just as prominent in the US. It seems we have lost the moderation, self-control, discipline, in search of instant gratification of any sort. Sad, really...Whether we see it on an obese person's frame, or hear it in a drunk person's voice, or read about it from a sex-addict's story.